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Audio routing in qtractor

Audio routing in qtractor is in my opinion very confusing as I'm an ardour user and being able to send signal of multiple tracks into one bus is very easy in ardour. I usually route the signal of couple of instruments to a single bus on which i have a reverb plugin by disconnecting the outputs of the instrument tracks from master and connecting them to the inputs of bus track but I have no idea how to accomplish something like that in qtractor and I completely don't understand qtractor's audio routing. I would really appreciate if someone could explain to me how I'm able to reroute the instrument(MIDI) tracks to make their entire signal go through a bus track to which I'll be able to apply additional effects and the other methods of doing that so I can make full use of qtractor's features.

Thanks.

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rncbc's picture

hi,
take note:
1. on MIDI tracks, audio are sent to the first audio output bus by default, usually Audio Master Out;
2. you may switch to any other audio output bus via plugin-list context-menu > Audio > (new audio out bus name);
3. or, in alternative you may opt to dedicated output ports which appears as jackaudio ports of their own;
4. you may even "fork" the audio signal into another designated Aux-Send audio output bus, other than the main one that is (as of 1. or 2.);

also, reading the good ol'user manual (https://qtractor.org/doc) might also give you an idea and overview of how things work in qtractor :) it might be outdated in some aspects but not in this regard and fundamental matter, mind you.

cheers

Hi,
I tried switching to other audio output as you advised(plugin-list context-menu > Audio > (new audio out bus name)) and it worked! The signal from both of those tracks is going into single bus but now I have no idea how to route the output of this bus to master, I've tried doing it by creating insert on master out and I got the audio from the bus to output from master but seemingly without any of the effects that are placed on that bus.
Thanks for so quick response.

Here are some screenshots:

rncbc's picture

you can't route back to Master anymore, all routing must always go forward: inputs -> tracks -> outputs... although you can aux-send from some output bus to another iif the later is listed _after_ the former, which is never the case of the first bus, usually Master Out as said.

but why do you want that? each audio output bus presents their out jack ports that you ought to connect somewhere (but take special note it is not advisable to first target any of the qtractor own inputs in that way).

cheers

I'd want to route bus track back into master to be able to apply some effects to a number of instrument tracks without the need of applying those effects to each track separately and wasting precious system resources and I want it all to go back to master to still be able to make everything happen inside qtractor and be able to render the entire mix in qtractor without the need of using separate external programs. Unless there is a way to have full mix rendered in qtractor without necessity of everything going through master.

Thanks again for responding so quickly and for help overall.

rncbc's picture

you may well insert your effects on each output bus, not only the Master one has that privilege.
also on audio export, you may well select more than just the Master bus. so your worries are unfounded.

byee

So my worries are really unfounded and this way of doing this still gives me the results I would expect so everything seems ok so far.

Huge thanks for help.

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